The New Orleans Saints have a need at wide receiver and the 2026 draft class looks to be an ideal one to fill it.
Brought to you by Trane: It's Hard To Stop A TraneHear the full interview with NFL draft analyst Lance Zierlein in the player above. Can't see the embed? Click here.
Along with the Ohio State star, the other options for the Saints at No. 8 would likely be USC's Makai Lemon or Arizona State's Jordyn Tyson. Zierlein sees Lemon as a high floor, lower ceiling option, while Tyson might be the most talented WR in the draft but carries significant injury concerns.
"This has been a hamstring injury that’s bothered him since the season," Zierlein said. "He couldn’t get right to run, he couldn’t get right to workout. Like, when is this going to be OK? That’s a real big concern for me."If the Saints sat at No. 42 or swung a trade to get into the late first round, a handful of other WR names emerge, Zierlein said, as potential options:
- K.C. Concepcion, Texas Tech
- Omar Cooper Jr., Indiana
- Denzel Boston, Washington
"I think those guys have upside to become very good WR2s in the league," Zierlein said.
The Saints currently have a WR room headlined by former first-round pick Chris Olave, but there are mostly question marks behind that. Devaughn Vele emerged late in the year but saw his season end early due to injury. He's the best bet for a WR2 right now. There is also a former second-round pick in Ja'Lynn Polk, whom the Saints traded for last year from the Patriots after he'd already suffered a season-ending injury. Trey Palmer, Bub Means and Mason Tipton, among others, are also slated to return.
MORE FROM ZIERLEIN
How about Chris Bell (Tyler Shough's college teammate)
“ACL tear so late in the process, I think is going to hurt him. You look at it, you could end up taking a redshirt year on him this year, so obviously when teams look at drafting a guy and they say all right … you take him outside the first round and we only get four years with him, but we lose one of them, so now we’ve only got them for three years, so you’re paying them four years to play three years, so that’s why you see those kind of guys fall.
With that said, I don’t think he falls any further than the third round. I had a team tell me just a couple days ago that he’d be, on their board, he’s the No. 1 wide receiver. Now, they’d have to draft him as such, but this team values size and play strength and they feel like he had the makings and the markings of a guy who could become a WR1. I like him. I think he’s physical. I think he’s got a lot of confidence when he plays, he knows how to use his body. I just, I think he’s going to have to prove that he can uncover a little bit better, he’s not going to be able to just bully everyone in the NFL, but to me he’s a Day 2 pick all day long."
On LSU's Mansoor Delane
“Honestly I think he’s one of the top three players in this draft. ... From a playing standpoint from a football standpoint it’s hard to pick at things that he doesn’t do well. I think when you start to talk about things you wish were a little big different about him, you’d say well, I wish he was 6 feet tall, I wish he had 32 inch arms, you know, but once you get past that I’m not sure where he’s lacking. He’s got tremendous change of direction, he’s got tremendous body control. He can hug routes real tight. He’s got great speed, vertically, as we saw at the LSU pro day. … But you can see it on tape, he’s fast. He’s somebody who can cover man-to-man, I think, on an island, on first, second and third level routes and I just think he’s easily the best cornerback in this draft. I know there’s a lot of people that really like Jermod McCoy, but for me, Mansoor Delane, I think he improved so much from that last year at Virginia Tech to this year, he really tightened everything up but he’s always had ball skills and he’s always had instincts. … For me, 4, 5 and 6, he should be in play at all those spots and if he’s there at [8] for the Saints, honestly I think he's a better value than any of the wide receivers those guys could look at.”
